


The Pond

by AsterRoc



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Harm to Children, Heavy Angst, My First Work in This Fandom, Other: See Story Notes, Sad, Self Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-05
Updated: 2013-03-05
Packaged: 2017-12-04 09:14:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/709080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsterRoc/pseuds/AsterRoc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack rises from the pond to begin his new life as Jack Frost.  This work follows his first year as a new winter spirit as he learns about his powers, the world around him, and of the children of Burgess - especially one sad little girl.  </p><p>(Other movie characters are cameos.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Pond

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning for self harm. I attempted to treat the topic with respect and dignity.

The water rippled dark and cold all around him. The cold was comforting, cradling and embracing him as he floated gently within its depths. At first when he opened his eyes, it was the same as if he had kept them closed, but then slowly the dark lightened before his face. A crisp cold white stared down at him, moving closer through the gently flowing currents, and then he realized that the light was stationary and he was rising towards it. His face broke through a crust of ice and he burst out into a beautiful winter night, and he gasped in a lungful of the soothing cold air. Snowflakes sparkled around the boy as he rose into the air, glowing in the light of the moon. 

“ _Your name is Jack Frost,_ ” a voice echoed around him. Looking up and around, Jack tried to find the source of the voice, for it had seemed to come from everywhere. The glowing moon caught his eye, and Jack knew it was the Man in the Moon who had spoken to him. 

“Well, uh, okay, thanks I think,” Jack replied as he settled back down onto the rippling surface of the pond where he had broken through. The ripples stilled as his bare feet approached, freezing solid. Jack scratched his head. “So um, what am I doing here?” 

A dark something in the corner of his eye flickered past, and Jack turned suddenly, trying to see what had moved, crouching into a defensive stance. He saw no further movement, heard nothing, and slowly rose and lowered his hands. He must have been imagining it. Jack didn’t realize he had picked up the wooden staff until its end touched the surface of the frozen pond, and a delicate lace of frost sprang into being where the staff touched the ice, traveling further across the pond towards the shore. Entranced, Jack tried again, touching the staff to another spot on the surface, then a couple trees, then running towards the shore. Faster and faster over the slick ice Jack ran, and then he leapt up intending to jump onto the bank, and was delighted when the cold wind around him picked him up at the peak of his leap and continued carrying him on into the sky. 

Jack laughed aloud with the fun of it, and twisted and turned through the sky, feeling the winds around him and learning to tell them what it was he wanted. 

Behind him, on the surface of the pond, Jack didn’t notice the pair of boy’s ice skates, left behind and forgotten, lightly dusted with snow from Jack’s passing. He also didn’t see the streaks of black, some sort of sand or mist, which streamed out from the shadows and coalesced into a tall gray man in a black cloak. Above, the moon shone down on the pond and the man. The man watched after Jack for a time, then turned his face up to the moon. 

“Well, old friend, it looks like you have another card on the table,” Pitch muttered softly, knowing the Man in the Moon could hear all that happened under his watchful eyes. “I’ll just have to see about that.”

* * *

Jack flew over the forest, yelling with joy as he did a corkscrew. Catching sight of something up ahead broke his concentration, and he tumbled down onto the branch of a tree. Where his feet and one hand clung, the tree branch became coated with frost, but Jack didn’t notice as he was staring at the lights of a town. Something about the warm little flames beckoned to him, and Jack jumped off the branch and glided down towards the people. 

Jack clumsily landed just outside the circle of firelight, and stumbled into the town, shepherd’s crook slung over his shoulder as though he were returning from checking on the sheep. Jack could feel the cool rays of the moon on his back, but walked away from them towards the warm glow of the fires ahead. After all, the Man in the Moon had done nothing for him but give him a name. He nodded jovially to an old man sitting on a barrel, but the man didn’t reply. Probably too busy whittling. Jack called a friendly hello to a matronly woman passing by in a bonnet, tugging his forelock in respect, and she kept walking busily on past. The red lights of the fires ahead were quite glaring to Jack’s dark adapted eyes, and feeling the roaring heat blazing off of the one in the center of the little village Jack expected to see a bonfire, but was surprised to realize it was only a small thing. He tugged his leather vest open to get some air. 

A few children were laughing and playing in the square, and Jack laughed along with them. One opened her mouth to catch the snowflakes whirling around Jack and twirled around dizzyingly close to colliding with him. “Whoah, watch it kiddo,” Jack admonished while taking a step back, but the child ignored him. Another child chased a dog holding a stick, and Jack crouched to corral the dog towards the child. He was surprised the dog didn’t slow or even swerve, but that was nothing to what he felt as the dog passed right through his body! It gave him shivers all over, but not like the fun shivers of a scary story, but something more like the shivers that that told him he might not really exist after all. Jack reeled around with the sensation, stumbling off to the side, and accidentally walked right through the child chasing the dog. Jack caromed in another direction after this second encounter, other people passing him as he staggered, and finally fetched up against the side of one of the small buildings, back against the wall, breathing heavily. 

“What was…” Jack gasped in shock. “how did… am I… Am I dead?” He frantically patted at his own body. It all felt solid and real. He touched his staff, the ground, the wall behind him. He stood up, turned to face the wall, and walked straight towards it confidently. “Ow!” He bounced off and rubbed his sore nose. He sat back down to think a while. 

The longer Jack sat and ruminated, the more he noticed the people in the square pulling their cloaks tighter. And the first child, the girl, had played with the snowflakes. Jack let out a gusting sigh of frustration, and saw the fire a few yards away blow to and fro with the breeze that was now flowing through the commons. More snowflakes formed from his breath, and fluttered in the breeze towards a child sullenly poking at the fire with a stick. Suddenly inspired, Jack found a small mound of snow beside him, scooped it up and made a snowball, and taking careful aim, threw it at the child next to the fire. It hit him square in between the shoulder blades. 

“Hey!” the child yelled indignantly, and turning around towards where the snowball came from, he saw the girl with her tongue out trying to catch snowflakes. The boy scooped up his own handful of snow, snuck up behind her, and shoved it down the back of her neck. The girl shrieked and jumped, and whirling around took off running after the boy who was now fleeing and laughing. The laughter was contagious, and soon a half a dozen children were running and playing in the snow together, Jack egging them on anytime they seemed to be tiring. 

Finally though, the adults marshaled their respective children together for bed, and ushered them back home. A silence fell over the small hamlet, only deepened by the snow falling softly around Jack. The fires died down, darkness slowly creeping in on them and finally extinguishing them, and still Jack sat and watched, waiting, listening. He felt there was something wrong here, but he did not know what. And then finally he heard it: a girl weeping. 

Jack softly padded over in his bare feet to the house from which the sobbing was coming. He peered into the window, pressing his hands and nose against the glass, and a lace of frost traced over the rippled panes. Two adults were holding a girl child in their arms as she cried, their bodies bent over hers and together, and shaking with their own silent crying. Jack concentrated and made some of the most beautiful snowflakes he had done yet, and sent them in through a crack under the door. The draft only made the family huddle tighter together for warmth. Jack decorated all their windows with frost, trying to show them the wonder and magic of the world beyond their grief. They shivered and shook. Jack did not know what was causing their sadness, but slowly realized that everyone must grieve sometimes, and sometimes no amount of entertainment could chase away the sadness. 

As Jack continued to watch, sad himself at the family’s unknown grief, the girl’s sobs slowly died down. The parents carried her to one of the two beds against the wall near the fireplace. The bed was much too large for the one child, and as they tried to put her down in it her wails resumed. Finally they carried her into their own bed on the other side of the hearth, and the family slept together. Unable to do anything else for them, Jack piled a bit of snow at the base of the door to prevent stray drafts that were not his own from sneaking in, and quietly left the town to its sleep, riding the chilly north wind.

* * *

The grief of the girl and her family saddened Jack, and over the coming days he returned to the small hamlet frequently. As he learned to master his powers, Jack brought the children of the town beautiful new fallen snow to make angels in, or snow of just the right texture for snowballs (not so dry that they wouldn’t stick, not so wet that they were slushy, and certainly not chunks of ice which could hurt), or he coated every surface with two inches of ice so all the adults and animals went skidding over everything and the children couldn’t stop laughing at their antics. 

All the children but the girl, that was. If anything, the ice days seemed to make the girl even sadder, and on days when the ground was slick she refused to leave the house at all. It was a mystery to Jack, he could see a pair of ice skates the right size for the girl, hanging on a peg in her house so clearly she enjoyed skating. He would have thought she’d put on the skates and glide through the town. All the other children were able to have some fun, but this one girl never even smiled. 

The girl also seemed afraid of the dark. After returning to her own bed, she always slept as close to the fire as it would allow. During the day she would avoid walking through the shadows of buildings or even of people. Sometimes her fear would briefly infect Jack, and he could swear he saw something moving in the shadows, or in the dark places between the trees in the forest around the clearing of the village. But that couldn’t be, it had to just be woodland animals. 

The days and the weeks passed, and Jack found it increasingly difficult to make the snow of the right consistency for snowballs, it was always a little too slushy. And he couldn’t reach a full two inches of ice when he crusted things over, a half inch was the best he could do. He noticed the adults weren’t buttoning their cloaks up all the way, and one day when the ground was bare the adults called the children from their play and took tools to the clearings and began to work in the dirt. Jack was so warm he was positively dripping, and it was actual liquid rather than snowflakes surrounding him. Jack watched as the sorrowful girl followed her parents, dragging her feet, but then her mother pointed out a small purple flower to her, and the girl seemed to perk up. 

Jack Frost realized then what was happening: winter was over. Spring was here, and his time was past, at least for now. He hopped up into the air, catching a last cold wind on its way back north for the season. The wind was weaker than when he flew into the town, but his skill had grown, and the wind was strong enough for him to ride. As he soared over the town, he saw two things that struck him as odd. The first was a large gray animal, as large as a human and with long feet and ears, but with a few bits of leather wrapped around his feet and torso, watching the town from a grass-covered hill. The second was felt more than seen, and it was a feeling that the shadows were retreating as the townspeople felt a new burst of hope within their chests at the weather.

* * *

Over the long spring and summer, Jack explored the rest of the world. He learned that parts of the northern hemisphere remained snow covered even throughout the warmest months, and here his powers remained strong. He learned of the regions which never saw snow at all. Here his powers were weak, but even the slightest bit that he could do, such as just one snowflake for one small child, brought the greatest amount of joy that he had ever seen. 

Jack found the places south of the equator where the seasons were reversed, and brought the children snow days and snowball fights there. He found Antarctica, a whole continent of snow and no children, and the adults were busy doing adult things and didn’t want to play. He found a Russian palace located in the side of a mountain at the North Pole, and seeing as it was always winter there Jack’s powers were strong and he thought it would be easy to break in, but wide furry creatures barred his way. They were immune to the lure of snowball fights, unfortunately, but Jack did manage to get a few of their names out of them. He couldn’t understand much else of their mutterings, but they were nice enough when they weren’t throwing him in a sack and carrying him back down the mountain. They were usually pretty gentle taking him back out of the sack too, except that time when Jack froze all their fur off their ears and tails. 

But even under the blaring heat of the summer sun, Jack still went back to the village once or twice. The girl was smiling more as the days grew longer, but during the nights she still huddled into a pathetic little ball – her parents refused to leave a light on in the darkness, despite her telling them she could feel a monster seeping up from under her bed to steal her away too. Jack could do nothing to help her, even had his powers been in full strength they could not have dispelled her fear, so in pain he left her to fight her own demons.

* * *

The days lengthened, then the days shortened once again. The nights grew longer, and the trees began to lose their brightness. Jack slept in a different place every day, and every day he managed to move his snow a little bit further south again. Sometimes Jack thought he could feel the night swirling around him, plucking at his clothes and trying to suck him in, but he replied with a swirl of snow filled air, sparkling in the moonlight, and it was gone. Jack looked up at the Man in the Moon, and asked him his purpose, but he never received a reply. Jack asked why the girl was so sad and afraid, and this too never received a response. Sometimes this angered Jack so much he impulsively pulled the winds and the snow around him, and swept clouds over the face of the moon. And sometimes this made Jack feel better, like he had some control over his life, but other times he could feel the darkness welling up all around him when the light was gone, and he thought he saw tendrils of black flowing at the corners of his vision. And besides, as it got colder, Jack was able to do more things with his powers again and so he was distracted from his questions. 

But nothing could distract him from his worry about the girl, and so he returned to her village.

* * *

The colors changed again in the little hamlet in the woods. Jack brought an early frost as he watched the children playing in the piles of leaves. At first the girl joined them, but as the nights grew longer, her sadness returned, and once again he watched her jumping at the shadows. At night she urged her parents to light a fire long before any of the other families did so. She was clearly afraid of the dark, and even checked under her bed each night. She did not respond to the first snowfall of the season, though all the other children gleefully ran out into the winter wonderland to build snowmen and try out their new sleds. 

Sometimes as she hurried home in the twilight, Jack could swear he saw the darkness reaching out to her, caressing her, as if claiming her for its own. He tried to chase the shadows away with twinkling snowflakes, but as the bright moon above began to wane in his monthly course, Jack Frost’s snowflakes no longer sparkled in the night. 

The worst was yet to come though. Jack iced over the town, and began to freeze the pond for the children to skate.

* * *

Jack did not believe in fear. He knew it existed, and had even experienced it once or twice, but it had no power over him. Or so he thought until he saw the girl standing at the side of the mostly frozen pond. Dark tendrils of mist or smoke seemed to swirl around her as she stood and gazed at the ice. Above, the sky was black as pitch. No moon shone, as it was new, and dark clouds covered the stars. They were not clouds of Jack’s making. The cold was more than just temperature, and that too was not of Jack’s doing. It was as opposite as a night could get from the sparkling moon-filled sky on the night when Jack Frost emerged from this very pond. 

In the deepening night, the girl stood beside the ice, breathing rapidly, clearly trying to make a decision. As Jack’s anxiety grew, she stepped out onto the ice. The girl’s eyes were haunted and black. She stared bleakly across the frozen pond, the darkness seeming to cloak her, and then she took a second step out onto the ice. 

The girl’s face was frozen and empty as she took another step, and another. Finally Jack couldn’t take it any more, he yelled at her to stop, and of course she did not hear him. Jack heard a sharp cracking noise, and looked down at the ice to see that it was cracking beneath the girl’s weight. It was still early in the winter, and the pond had not fully frozen over. Jack quickly struck the surface at his feet with his staff, and near him the water solidified further and began to spread towards the girl. But the black clouds surrounding the girl surged to meet the line of thicker ice moving towards her, and the darkness seemed to fight back Jack’s cold. It was impossible, but something was preventing his cold from traveling across the pond to the girl. 

Jack realized that tears were streaking down the girl’s face, leaving tracks which turned to ice as they fell. “What are you doing! Why are you doing this?” Jack yelled at her in anguish, knowing as he did so how hopeless it was. And then the girl looked up. She looked through him though, as always, talking to herself. 

“Why did you have to leave me?” she whispered. “It was my fault for going out on the pond before checking the thickness of the ice.” Jack did not know what she was talking about, and his eyes frantically scanned the pond for something he could do. She slid one foot forward. Jack noticed that she wore a pair of ice skates on her feet, and the blades seemed to be making the ice crack even further. “It was my mistake, I should have been the one to die for it, not you.” She brought her left foot forward to match her right. The clouds of despair swirled faster and thicker around her. Jack blew on the surface of the pond, but again the dreaded black mass fought back his breath. He didn’t know what to do, he could see that the ice got thinner in the direction she was walking, but the darkness around her was stopping his efforts to support the ice. He looked up to her face, and on the way noticed she carried a second pair of skates in her right hand as she continued to shuffle forward, one skate-shod foot at a time. Finally he rushed forward bodily into the cloud trying to grab her, but the material got thicker and thicker the harder he pushed, and he could get no closer to the girl than a few feet. Jack’s heart froze within him with fear as the girl’s right foot moved forward again. The darkness thickened still further. 

“It was not your time to die,” the girl continued, as if telling a story to herself. Jack could see that she was shaking in fear of what she was doing, and yet she slid her left foot another inch. “It was all my fault. I’m so sorry.” Tears streamed down the girl’s face now. 

“I’m so, so sorry… Jack.” A white hot noise filled Jack Frost’s head as the girl spoke on. “I believed in you, I thought you could make everything better, and you did keep your promise to save me, but you didn’t save yourself.”

Jack fell to his knees in front of the girl, bringing his head down to her eye level. The black mist was just thin enough around her face that he could stare straight into her eyes, as hers stared straight through his. The ice beneath Jack’s feet was solid and thick, but where the swirling cloud surrounded the girl, Jack could look down and see it was cracking with her weight. Small hailstones fell from Jack’s own eyes, matching the tears freezing on the girl’s cheeks. 

Kneeling in front of the girl, Jack looked directly into her eyes and whispered, “I believe in you. Do you believe in me?” And suddenly the girl’s eyes snapped into focus on him. 

“Jack?” Her eyes widened and jerked up and down across his body crouching before her. Down to his bare feet, then back up to his white hair, and then returning to make eye contact with Jack Frost. “Jack? Is that really you? But, but… your hair, and you’re…” and the girl’s eyes lost focus again as she trailed off, looking inward this time. “I do believe in you,” she whispered, “and if I am seeing you here, it is because you are a ghost and have been denied Heaven because of me.” She choked back a sob, and then her face became determined. 

The girl’s dark brown eyes refocused, and she stared straight into Jack Frost’s blue eyes, as blue as the pure ice dripping down a mountain side. “I do believe in you. And you deserve better than this.” And with that, she raised her right foot and stomped it down hard on the thin ice beneath her. 

The dark clouds swirling around her swallowed her up and blocked her from view as she fell into the water. 

“Noooooooo!” Jack threw himself forward, reaching out a hand towards her as the roiling black clouds seemed to be sucked into the frigid black water. He darted his hand to where she had slipped into the water, but with the mist gone the water froze at his approach, and his hand only struck ice. The girl was gone. 

Jack Frost knelt on the completely frozen pond, body shaking with his sobs. Icicles flowed from his eyes, the wind howled and moaned around him, and blinding snow fell for miles around him throughout the rest of the night, through the next day, and even into the one after that. He didn’t know how the girl had finally seen him, or who she had mistaken him for, but he was devastated that he had been unable to save her from her own despair and fear. Finally on the third day after she fell into the icy waters of the pond, he was roused from his grief by the sound of children throwing snowballs at each other. 

He vowed that he would bring as much joy into the lives of these children and all other children as he possibly could. He hadn’t been able to save that girl, but perhaps it would ease the hole in his heart a little bit, each time he heard another child laugh. Jack swung his staff beneath him, and skated off the pond where he’d been crouching for the past three days to join the children’s game. Even if they couldn’t see him, he could still make things a bit more fun for them. 

In the shadows on the far side of the pond from the children, the thin gray man known as Pitch Black or the Bogeyman watched Jack with a satisfied expression. Though making its way back down to the horizon, the sun was still bright on the snow, so Pitch stayed well back from the clearing around the pond. The crescent moon trailed behind the sun’s path, a bit above the sun as it moved towards the horizon. 

“And what do you think of that, old friend?” Pitch asked the Man in the Moon. “Two lives destroyed in fear, though that one doesn’t know it yet. And the darkness comes on, I shall only get stronger.” 

The Man in the Moon did not reply of course. But as the crescent moon sank towards the horizon, the edges curved up in a smile.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first Rise of the Guardians fic, I hope you enjoyed it! I'm pretty new to writing fanfic in general, and I'd love any feedback on it - story structure especially, but also advice on tagging here at AO3.


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